Enterprises can take a key lesson from game-changing tools like Flipboard and Nest Thermostat: Disrupt but don’t break.
I stay amazed by the rapid pace of innovation in virtually every technology market. At any time when you blink, it sort of feels there’s another startup taking up the old guard.
Conventional wisdom in technology is it’s essential to abandon the prevailing order when faced with a brand new bright and glossy product. However, as someone who has worked with both startups and global leaders, i do know it can’t be an either/or approach. Scrapping years or decades of investment in infrastructure is foolish, and the innovators who’re winning are building their breakthrough tools on top of proven technologies. Two great examples are products i take advantage of and love: Flipboard and Nest Thermostat.
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By nature, Nest and Flipboard improve upon existing products rather than looking to replace them. For instance, rather than creating its own content from scratch, Flipboard compiles content that already exists right into a format in response to users’ preferences. By an analogous token, the Nest Thermostat makes no try to re-engineer a whole heating/cooling system. Instead, it offers a wiser thermostat that integrates with the heating/cooling infrastructure that’s already in place.
With the enterprise technology space becoming more competitive by the day, you can be asking how we will apply this model to enterprise technology. Let’s dig somewhat deeper into the Flipboard and Nest strategies to determine.
Flipboard reimagines existing content
Flipboard recognized that while there’s a nearly unlimited quantity of content available online, consumers spend an enormous period of time skimming through dozens of web sites and hundreds of pages to get to the content that interests them.
So, Flipboard developed breakthrough mobile apps, a cultured user interface, and a curated reader-driven content method to pull in readers. This formula allowed the corporate to continue innovating while adding tens of millions of users along the way in which.
One issue the corporate had to address was content producers’ want to maintain a definite brand and form relationships with readers. That’s why Flipboard pays such close attention to format and feel and appear with features like customizable layouts and user interfaces that adapt for your device. That way, they could keep both the content producers and the readers happy.
Nest makes the system smarter
Nest had the breakthrough insight that, while the true delivery mechanisms for residential heating and air-con systems were working well, human errors and inefficiencies of traditional thermostats were resulting in wasted energy and rising heating and cooling costs.
Nest came up with a chic and easy solution that worked and has continued to release new versions of the thermostat and its software, improving its simplicity and user friendliness. Nest has also continued to develop products beyond its initial market beachhead, including a wise smoke/carbon monoxide detector, that is a logical extension that naturally appeals to people who own or have an interest within the Nest Thermostat.
It’s clear that Nest has made it a concern to grasp its customer base: the homeowner. Homeowners are making the acquisition decision and want to be convinced of the product’s value. So, Nest offers rebates, proof of energy and money savings, and the choice to simply control the product through your mobile device.
Enterprise technology: How does it fit the mildew?
As Flipboard and Nest show, new technologies need not reinvent the wheel. Here’s much more important within the enterprise, where companies have invested millions of greenbacks of their IT systems.
Take Splunk, to illustrate. IT groups need analytics on all of the critical systems they have the ability to better know how they’re performing. Other than require IT admins to give logs in a typical format, Splunk designed its system to import files in any format directly from the systems IT manages, and developed a dashboard of insights and alerts. It fundamentally changed IT operations without completely ranging from scratch.
On the opposite hand, most cloud file storage solutions have taken a distinct approach. Every company has a system for managing its files and data, but new technologies akin to cloud, mobile, and social tools have changed the manner users share and access data. In line with these major technology trends, popular new tools for file sync and sharing, like Box and Dropbox, are creating new information silos that aren’t integrated with existing file systems. While these services are easy to apply, it’s a must to drag the files you need to share right into a proprietary cloud one after the other.
There is obviously value in these new solutions, but a greater approach is the Nest and Flipboard method: Incorporate new capabilities comparable to user-friendly mobile apps, hybrid cloud storage option,s and newsfeed-like streams on file changes, but integrate them with existing corporate file servers, security standards, and compliance regulations.
Continuous innovation have been key for both Flipboard and Nest, whether it’s in well designed mobile apps or a continuing cycle of hardware and software updates. Established industries and processes like heating and cooling systems, the publishing industry, and enterprise IT exist for a reason: They’re effective solutions to real problems. If new ideas don’t fit inside the existing frameworks, they are able to cause more disruption than they’re worth. Instead, be like Nest, Flipboard, and Splunk: Disrupt, but don’t break.
Jeetu Patel leads EMC’s Syncplicity file sync and share business. Ahead of his current role, Jeetu was chief strategy officer of EMC’s Information Intelligence Group (IIG), where he was answerable for product and growth strategies.
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